OBSERVE, there comes to you, by the Kendal waggon
tomorrow, the illustrious 5th of November, a box, containing the Miltons, the strange American Bible, with
White’s brief note, to which
you will attend; Baxter’s
“Holy
Commonwealth,” for which you stand indebted to me 3s. 6d.; an
odd volume of Montaigne, being of no use
to me, I having the whole; certain books belonging to Wordsworth, as do also the strange
thick-hoofed shoes, which are very much admired at in London. All these
sundries I commend to your most strenuous looking after. If you find the
Miltons in certain parts dirtied and soiled with a crumb of right Gloucester
blacked in the candle (my usual supper), or peradventure a stray ash of tobacco
wafted into the crevices, look to that passage more especially: depend upon it,
it contains good matter. I have got your little Milton which, as it contains
Salmasius—and I make a rule of never
hearing but one side of the question (why should I distract myself?)—I shall
return to you when I pick up the Latina opera. The first Defence is the
greatest work among them, because it is uniformly great, and such as is
befitting the very mouth of a great nation speaking for itself. But the second Defence, which is but
a succession of splendid episodes slightly tied together, has one passage which
if you have not read, I conjure you to lose no time, but read it; it is his
consolations in his blindness, which had been made a reproach to him. It begins
whimsically, with poetical flourishes about Tiresias and other blind worthies (which still are mainly
interesting as displaying his singular mind, and in what degree poetry entered
into his daily soul, not by fits and impulses, but engrained and innate); but
the concluding page, i.e. of this
passage (not of the Defensio) which you will easily find, divested of all brags
and flourishes, gives so rational, so true an enumeration of his comforts, so
human, that it cannot be read without the deepest interest. Take one touch of
the religious part:—“Et sane haud ultima Dei cura
cæci—(we blind folks, I understand
it not nos for ego;)—sumus; qui nos, quominus
quicquam aliud prater ipsum cernere valemus, eo clementius atque
benignius respicere dignatur. Væ qui illudit nos, væ qui lædit,
execratione publica devovendo; nos ab iniuriis hominum non modo
incolumes, sed pene sacros divina lex reddidit, divinus favor: nec tam
oculorum hebetudine quam cœlestium alarum umbrâ has nobis fecisse tenebras

All this, and much more, is highly pleasing to know. But you may easily
find it;—and I don’t know why I put down so many words about it, but for
the pleasure of writing to you and the want of another topic.

Richard Baxter (1615-1691)
Presbyterian divine and leader of the nonconformist church in England; he was a popular
and voluminous writer. “The last words of Mr. Baxter,” referring to a dispute with his
printer, became proverbial.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834)
English poet and philosopher who projected Lyrical Ballads (1798)
with William Wordsworth; author of Biographia Literaria (1817), On the Constitution of the Church and State (1829) and other
works.

Charles James Fox (1749-1806)
Whig statesman and the leader of the Whig opposition in Parliament after his falling-out
with Edmund Burke.

John Milton (1608-1674)
English poet and controversialist; author of Comus (1634), Lycidas (1638), Areopagitica (1644), Paradise Lost (1667), and other works.

Michel de Montaigne (1533-1592)
French writer and moralist, magistrate and mayor of Bordeaux (1581-85); he was the author
of Essais (1580, 1595).

Claude Saumaise [Salmasius] (1588-1653)
French classical scholar patronized by Queen Christina of Sweden; he responded to the
execution of the British monarch with Defensio regia, pro Carolo I
(1649).

James White (1775-1820)
Educated at Christ's Hospital, where he was for many years a clerk in the treasurer's
office. He founded an advertising agency which operated in Fleet Street.

William Wordsworth (1770-1850)
With Coleridge, author of Lyrical Ballads (1798), Wordsworth
survived his early unpopularity to succeed Robert Southey as poet laureate in 1843.